Ukraine, perfection of Orwellian "well planned drama" media perception around IMF/CIA/NED coup as a "grass roots democratic reform"; how it's done --- "Among the numerous Western foundations, the [Orwellian named] National Endowment for Democracy (NED), although not officially part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function in shaping party politics in
the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and around the World. [NED additionally involved in funding of Venezuelan coup against Chavez.] NED was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly
bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for establishing the NED during the Reagan Administration: "A lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." (Washington
Post, Sept. 21, 1991). --- "Pora's posters plastered all over Ukraine DEPICT A JACKBOOT crushing a beetle, an allegory of what Pora wants to do to its opponents. It was like this during Nazi-occupied Ukraine,...Nobody in the West has said anything against these posters. Pora continues to be presented [by CNN] as an innocent band of students having fun. But it is an organization created and financed by Washington, as were sister organizations in Serbia and Georgia, Otpor and Kmara." --- "It is claimed that officially the US government spent US$41 million to fund the year-long operation to get rid of Milosevich from October 1999. In Ukraine, the figure is said to be about $14 million so far."

3 articles on "Ukranianization": external covert coup pressure, framed
however in media as a grass roots internal democratic concern.
Actually, since Serbia, all have been the same US pattern of destabalization and 'de-democratization' by any other name. Same strategy in Aserbaijan, Georgia, and Yugoslavia in the past several years by the way. Exactly the same pattern. Exactly the same IMF involvement. Gaining territory for the global de-democratization of the corporate state.

IMF Sponsored "Democracy" in The Ukraine
by Michel Chossudovsky

summary:
----------------------------

Among the numerous Western foundations, the [Orwellian named] National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), although not officially part of the CIA,
performs an important intelligence function in shaping party politics in
the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and around the World. [NED
additionally involved in funding of Venezuelan coup against Chavez.]

NED was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly
bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front
organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for
establishing the NED during the Reagan Administration: "A lot of what we
[NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." (Washington
Post, Sept. 21, 1991).

. . .

Who is Viktor Yushchenko? IMF Sponsored Candidate

In 1993, Viktor Yushchenko was appointed head of the newly-formed
National Bank of Ukraine. Hailed as a "daring reformer", he was among the
main architects of the IMF's deadly economic medicine which served to
impoverish The Ukraine and destroy its economy.

Following his appointment, the Ukraine reached a historical agreement
with the IMF. Mr Yushchenko played a key role in negotiating the 1994
agreement as well as creating a new Ukrainian national currency, which
resulted in a dramatic plunge in real wages.

The 1994 IMF package was finalized behind closed doors at the Madrid
50 years anniversary Summit of the Bretton Woods institutions. It required
the Ukrainian authorities to abandon State controls over the exchange rate
leading to an impressive collapse of the currency.

Yushchenko as Head of the Central Bank was responsible for
deregulating the national currency under the October 1994 "shock
treatment":

* The price of bread increased overnight by 300 percent,
* electricity prices by 600 percent,
* public transportation by 900 percent.
* the standard of living tumbled

According to the Ukrainian State Statistics Committee, quoted by the
IMF, real wages in 1998 had fallen by more than 75 percent in relation to
their 1991 level. [and this is the guy the U.S. media organizations there
are selling to the world as the 'grassroots democrat'.]

In Ukraine, a franchised revolution...

The events in Serbia, Georgia and now Ukraine are an expression of people's frustration and helplessness, however, pro-West leadership is unlikely to deliver the goods either. Romania's GDP now equals what it was in 1989, when the communist regime was overthrown. Most of the GDP is now cornered by 10-15% of the top political and bureaucratic elite. The masses - especially the older generation - suffer from daily privations and are withering away. The populations in most of the former communist states are declining fast. But the Western media rarely write about the terrible impact of this so-called democracy, capitalism and globalization.

The man "selected" by the West to lead Ukraine, Yushchenko, finds his
support among groups who have privatized public assets to their cronies.

He is supported by huge funds from newly rich Ukrainians, who want to
preserve their gains. Huge amounts of money were also pumped from the West
to groups who support Yushchenko. Openly and blatantly, the US and other
Western embassies paid for exit polls.... the Ukrainian poll, like its
predecessors, also featured thousands of local election monitors trained
and paid by western groups. ... They also organised exit polls. On Sunday
night those [foreign US] polls gave Mr Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set
the agenda for much of what has followed." (Ian Traynor 26 November 2004,
the Guardian, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TRA411A.html )

. . .

The Western media have only highlighted how youthful demonstrators can
bring down an authoritarian regime, simply by attending rock concerts in a
central square. The demonstrations supporting pro-Western Yushchenko have
laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts,
tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing. These are all
[framed as] spontaneous protests. [Actually, in Georgia, they were
practiced for many months, by imported US agitators to support the
US candidate Schakiavili (sp?) [UK Guardian story, quoted below.] Enormous rallies were held in Kiev and eastern Ukraine in support of Yanukovich, but Western TV channels hardly noticed them. Yanukovich supporters were denigrated as having been brought in by buses, while ignoring obvious questions such as where the "Orange Revolution" money has come from and how quickly the opposition organized. It appears to be another case of spreading democracy through the use of a civilian coup d'etat.

. . .

Pora's posters plastered all over Ukraine depict a jackboot crushing a
beetle, an allegory of what Pora wants to do to its opponents. It was like
this during Nazi-occupied Ukraine, when pre-emptive war was waged against
the Red Plague spreading out from Moscow. Nobody in the West has said
anything against these posters. Pora continues to be presented as an
innocent band of students having fun. But it is an organization created
and financed by Washington, as were sister organizations in Serbia and
Georgia, Otpor and Kmara.

Says a Western Cold War warrior: "If we, comfortably ensconced in the
institutionalized Europe to which these peaceful demonstrators look with
hope and yearning, do not immediately support them with every appropriate
means at our disposal, we will betray the very ideals we claim to
represent." He adds, "At the same time, until now, democracy has been
creeping backwards. Control of the biggest industries, of the media, of
state revenue and of the security services has fallen into the hands of a
corrupt and sometimes murderous elite of cynical, self-loving opportunists
who feed off the enterprise and hard work of others as they float between
the worlds of business, politics and bureaucracy."

This might more appropriately apply to new Western-supported rulers in
former communist countries and even some countries in the West. The United
Kingdom and the US often forget the enormous dysfunction in their own
so-called democratic system, where their governments lied brazenly about
Iraq for over a year in the run-up to war and with impunity, while they
criticize others and support continued brazen Western intervention in the
democratic politics of other countries.

. . .

It is claimed that officially the US government spent US$41 million to
fund the year-long operation to get rid of Milosevich from October 1999.
In Ukraine, the figure is said to be about $14 million so far.

. . .

A US franchise ["McRevolution" or "McCoup"]

A lot of planning, work and money has gone into efforts to design a US
model for promoting democracy (sic) around the world. The model's first
success was notched in Serbia. Funded and organized by the US government,
which deployed US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big
American parties and US non-government organizations (NGOs), the campaign
defeated Slobodan Milosevich at the ballot box in Belgrade in 2000.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role in the
campaign to oust Milosevich. In November last year, as US ambassador in
Tbilisi, Miles reapplied the same method successfully. Thanks to his
coaching, US-educated Saakashvili brought down Eduard Shevardnadze. When
the US ambassador in Belarus, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar
operations in Central America, notably in Nicaragua, organized a near
identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus strongman, Alexander
Lukashenko, he failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the
Belarus president declared, referring to the United States' Belgrade
success 10 months earlier.

But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable
to the US in planning the operation in Kiev. It is thus easy to understand
such slickly organized spontaneity. The operation - engineering democracy
through the ballot box and civil disobedience, which would be the envy of
even a Gandhian - is now so smooth that methods have matured into a
template for winning other people's elections.

. . .

...also organized exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Yushchenko
an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed.

The exit polls are important because they help seize the initiative in the
propaganda war with the regime, invariably appearing first, receiving wide
media coverage and putting the onus on the attacked regime to respond. And
how to react when the incumbent regime tries to steal a lost election. The
advice was to stay calm and cool but organize mass displays of civil
disobedience, which must remain peaceful but could invite violent
suppression.

The US has now adapted and perfected the latest communication techniques
to apply to post-Soviet states to bring about desirable changes.
"Instruments of democracy" are used to topple unpopular dictators or
unfriendly regimes, once a successor candidate friendly to the West
[the IMF and transnational corporations and the other usual suspects] has
been groomed. The Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored Third World
uprisings of the Cold War days to remove prime minister Mohammed Mossadaq
of Iran, who had nationalized its oil resources, and of Salvador Allende
of Chile, which brought US favorite General Augusto Pinochet to power, a
man whose crimes are still being catalogued and looked into, are now
passe.

That is the promotion of democracy, US style. [closer to techno-populist fascism] Who is next in line?

. . .

[just last year, 2003, the same formula, in Georgia to change the
government illegally]

Georgians deserve praise for staging peaceful demonstrations that involved
up to 50,000 people. But were they just extras in a well-planned drama
starring Saakashvili from American casting?

Saakashvili, Zhvania and Burdzhanadze have promised fair elections, but
they came to power by forcing the president from office and jumping the
election process.

. . .

It is a tragedy for Georgians, who queued for hours to vote on election
day and desperately want a democracy. In the new presidential elections
scheduled for January 4, [2004] Saakashvili is the only serious candidate. The Labour party leader has announced that it is pointless to stand. This was not a people's revolution. It was a coup, masked by the biggest street
party that Tbilisi has ever seen.

Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukrainian presidential
elections is firmly backed by the Washington Consensus.

He is not only supported by the IMF and the international financial
community, he also has the endorsement of The National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) , the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ,
Freedom House and George Soros' Open Society Institute, which played a
behind the scenes role last year in helping "topple Georgia's president
Eduard Shevardnadze by putting financial muscle and organizational metal
behind his opponents." (New Statesman, 29 November 2004).

The NED has four affiliate institutes: The International Republican
Institute (IRI) , the National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) ,
and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). These
organizations are said to be "uniquely qualified to provide technical
assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide." See IRI,
http://www.iri.org/history.asp )

In the Ukraine, the NED and its constituent organizations fund
Yushchenko's party Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine), it also finances the Kiev
Press Club. In turn, Freedom House, together with The Independent
Republican Institute (IRI) are involved in assessing the "fairness of
elections and their results". IRI has staff present in "poll watching" in
9 oblasts (districts), and local staff in all 25 oblasts:

"There are professional outside election monitors from bodies such
as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but the
Ukrainian poll, like its predecessors, also featured thousands of local
election monitors trained and paid by western groups. ... They also
organised exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr Yushchenko an
11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed." (Ian
Traynor 26 November 2004, the Guardian,
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TRA411A.html )

Needless to say these various foundations are committed to "Freedom of
the Press". Their activities consist not only in organizing exit polls and
feeding disinformation into the Western news chain, they are also involved
in the creation and funding of "pro-Western", "pro-reform" student groups,
capable of organizing mass displays of civil disobedience. (For details,
see Traynor, op cit) In the Ukraine, the Pora Youth movement ("Its Time")
funded by the Soros Open Society Institute is part of that process with
more than 10,000 activists. Supported by the Freedom of Choice Coalition
of Ukrainian NGOs , Pora is modeled on Serbia's Otpor and Georgia's Kmara.

The Freedom of Choice Coalition acts as an Umbrella organization. It
is directly supported by the US and British embassies in Kiev as well as
by Germany, through the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (a foundation linked to
the ruling Social Democrats). Among its main "partners" (funding agencies)
it lists USAID, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA),
Freedom House, The World Bank and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Among the numerous Western foundations, the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED), although not officially part of the CIA, performs an
important intelligence function in shaping party politics in the former
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and around the World.

NED was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly
bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front
organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for
establishing the NED during the Reagan Administration: "A lot of what we
do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." (Washington Post,
Sept. 21, 1991).

In the former Soviet Union including the Ukraine, the NED constitutes,
so to speak, the CIA's "civilian arm". CIA-NED interventions are
characterized by a consistent pattern. In Venezuela, the NED was also
behind the failed CIA coup against President Hugo Chavez and in Haiti it
funded the opposition parties and NGOs, in the US sponsored coup d'Etat
and deportation of president Aristide in February 2004. (For details, see
Michel Chossudovsky, 29 Feb 2004,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402D.html )

In the former Yugoslavia, the CIA channeled support to the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) (since 1995), a paramilitary group involved in
terrorist attacks on the Yugoslav police and military.
[Additionally, drug traders and on the State Department list as a
terrorist organization at the time.] Meanwhile, the NED through the
"Center for International Private Enterprise" (CIPE) was backing the DOS
opposition coalition in Serbia and Montenegro. More specifically, NED was
financing the G-17, an opposition group of economists responsible for
formulating (in liaison with the IMF) the DOS coalition's "free market"
reform platform in the 2000 presidential election, which led to the
downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.

Copy and Paste? The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE)
has a very similar mandate in the Ukraine, where it directly funds
research on "free market reforms" in several key "independent think tanks"
and policy research institutes. The Kiev based International Center for
Policy Studies (ICPS) is supported by CIPE. It has a similar function to
that of the G-17 in Serbia and Montenegro: A group of local economists
hired by ICPS was put in charge of drafting, with the support of the World
Bank, a comprehensive blueprint of post-election macro-economic reform.

Who is Viktor Yushchenko? IMF Sponsored Candidate

In 1993, Viktor Yushchenko was appointed head of the newly-formed
National Bank of Ukraine. Hailed as a "daring reformer", he was among the
main architects of the IMF's deadly economic medicine which served to
impoverish The Ukraine and destroy its economy.

Following his appointment, the Ukraine reached a historical agreement
with the IMF. Mr Yushchenko played a key role in negotiating the 1994
agreement as well as creating a new Ukrainian national currency, which
resulted in a dramatic plunge in real wages.

The 1994 IMF package was finalized behind closed doors at the Madrid
50 years anniversary Summit of the Bretton Woods institutions. It required
the Ukrainian authorities to abandon State controls over the exchange rate
leading to an impressive collapse of the currency.

Yushchenko as Head of the Central Bank was responsible for
deregulating the national currency under the October 1994 "shock
treatment":

* The price of bread increased overnight by 300 percent,
* electricity prices by 600 percent,
* public transportation by 900 percent.
* the standard of living tumbled

Ironically, the IMF sponsored program was intended to alleviate
inflationary pressures: it consisted in imposing "dollarised" prices on an
impoverished population with earnings below ten dollars a month.

Combined with the abrupt hikes in fuel and energy prices, the lifting
of subsidies and the freeze on credit contributed to destroying industry
(both public and private) and undermining Ukraine's breadbasket economy.

In November 1994, World Bank negotiators were sent in to examine the
overhaul of Ukraine's agriculture. With trade liberalization (which was
part of the economic package), US grain surpluses and "food aid" were
dumped on the domestic market, contributing to destabilizing one of the
World's largest and most productive wheat economies, (e.g. comparable to
that of the American Mid West).

By 1998, the deregulation of the grain market had resulted in a
decline in the production of grain by 45 percent in relation to its
1986-90 level. The collapse in livestock production, poultry and dairy
products was even more dramatic.

The cumulative decline in GDP resulting from the IMF sponsored reforms
was in excess of 60 percent (from 1992 to 1995).

Propaganda in support of the "Free Market"

Under these circumstances, why would Yushchenko, who was closely
associated with the process of economic destruction and impoverishment be
so popular? Why has the public image and political reputation of an IMF
protg, namely Mr. Yushchenko remained unscathed?

What the neoliberal agenda does is to build a consensus in "the free
market reforms". "Short term pain gain for long term gain" says the World
Bank. "Bitter economic medicine" is the only solution, much in the same
way as the Spanish inquisition was the consensus underlying the feudal
social order.

In an utterly twisted logic, poverty is presented as a precondition
for building a prosperous society. This consensus presents a World of
landless farmers, shuttered factories, jobless workers and gutted social
programs as a means to achieving economic and social progress.

To sustain the consensus and convince public opinion, requires
"turning the World upside down", creating divisions within society,
distorting the truth and ensuring, through a massive propaganda campaign,
that no other viable political alternative to the "free market" is allowed
to emerge.

Why is Yushchenko so popular? For same reason as George W. Bush,
running on his record of war crimes is popular.

And because his opponent, outgoing Prime Minister Yanukovich does not
represent a genuine political alternative for The Ukraine, which
forcefully challenges the international financial institutions and the
interests of Western corporate capital, which are destroying and
impoverishing an entire nation.

The 2004 election in the Ukraine was built on a massive propaganda and
public relations campaign, supported by the US, with money payoffs by
Washington for political parties and organizations committed to Western
strategic and economic interests. In turn, US intelligence, working hand
in glove with various foundations including the NED, has consistently
supported this process of civil society manipulation. The objective is not
democracy, but rather the fracturing and colonization of the former Soviet
Union.

The IMF and "Good Governance"

In the Ukraine, the IMF not only intervened in the implementation of
the macroeconomic agenda, it also intruded directly in the arena of
domestic party politics. As in Russia in 1993, the Ukrainian parliament
was seen as an obstacle to the implementation of the "free market
reforms". In 1999, under due pressure from Washington and the IMF,
Yushchenko was appointed Prime Minister:

Yushchenko's candidacy had been proposed by 10 parliamentary
groups and factions, and Kuchma agreed with their choice...

The weightiest argument may be the International Monetary Fund's
desire to see Yushchenko as Ukraine's prime minister, because the
provision of the former Soviet republic with extended finance facilities
depends on that.

Several parliament members believe the IMF is ready to extend a
loan worth 300m dollars to Ukraine in January in case Yushchenko becomes
prime minister. (ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, 17 Dec 1999)

Following his appointment, Yushchenko immediately set in motion a
major IMF sponsored bankruptcy program directed against Ukrainian
industry, which essentially consisted in closing down part of the
country's manufacturing base. He also attempted to undermine the
bilateral trade in oil and natural gas between Russia and the Ukraine on
behalf of the IMF which had demanded that this trade be conducted in US
dollars rather than in terms of commodity barter.

They have sacked "our own" Prime Minister!

Yushchenko was accused by his opponents of having put the interests of
the IMF ahead of those of the country. In 2001, Yushchenko was sacked as
prime minister following a non-confidence vote in the parliament:

"Viktor Yushchenko has fulfilled obligations to the IMF better
and more accurately than his duties to citizens of his our country, Olena
Markosyan, a Kharkiv-based analyst, has opined in Ukrainian centrist daily
Den" (BBC Monitoring, 16 Nov 2004)

"This [Yushchenko] government openly states that it executes all
IMF recommendations. Though the government declares the social direction
of its policy, actually it is carrying out an anti-social, anti-national
policy," said Communist Party leader Heorhiy Kruchkov ( quoted in
Financial Times, May 17, 2001)

The international financial community took immediate action. The
Ukraine was back on the creditors' blacklist.

"The West, which openly put its stake on Yushchenko recently, is
not likely to sit on its hands. There is no lack of instruments to bring
pressure on Kiev. Most probably the question of resuming IMF, World Bank
and EBRD credits to Ukraine will be put on hold because they were
expressly linked with Yushchenko's stay in power.... Talks with the Paris
Club on restructuring Ukraine's $1.2 billion debt may run into
difficulty... Not surprisingly, (Ukrainian President) Leonid Kuchma
yesterday hastened to distance himself from what is happening and spoke
critically about the Rada [Parliament] decision. (Vremya Novostei, 1 May
2001, original Russian)

IMF Managing Director Horst Kohler was adamant. "Yushchenko has gained
a lot of credibility outside of Ukraine, and I think he also deserves
support inside of Ukraine." (quoted in the Financial Times, 27 April
2001). The IMF Head did not mince his words:

"He added that the IMF respects Ukraine's right to choose its
leaders, but maintained that the direction of reforms must be preserved.
He questioned the wisdom of the VR spending time on maneuvering for a vote
of no-confidence in the government while reforms need to be implemented."

Replicating Yugoslavia. The Partition of The Ukraine?

A few months after his dismissal in 2001, Yushchenko was in Washington
for talks with senior members of the Bush administration. He was back in
Washington in early 2003 under the auspices of the International
Republican Institute. During this visit, he met with Vice President Dick
Cheney and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The Neocons had carefully "set the stage" for the October-November
2004 presidential elections.

Yugoslavia was a dress rehearsal for the fracturing of the remnant
republics of the former Soviet Union. As recent developments suggest, the
break up of the country, namely the partition of The Ukraine, modeled on
the experience of former Yugoslavia is, no doubt, one among several
transition "scenarios" envisaged by the Bush administration.

Creating divisions between Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars in Crimea and
other ethnic groups, between Russian Orthodox. Ukrainian Orthodox and
Ukrainian Catholics, etc. is part of Washington's hidden agenda.

Military Realignments in support of the Free Market

Militarisation supports the Free Market and vice versa. The CIA
oversees the NED. The donor community including the Washington based
Bretton Woods institutions collaborate with the European Union, NATO and
the US State Department.

War and Globalization go in hand in hand. While Yushchenko is
considered a protg of the international financial community, his colleague
and political crony, former Defense Minister Yevyen Marchuk is a unbending
supporter of US and NATO military presence in the region.

It was largely the initiative of Yevyen Marchuk as Defense Minister to
send Ukrainian troops to Iraq, a decision which was opposed by the
majority of the Ukrainian population.

In August, Marchuk met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at The
Crimean seaside resort of Yalta.

On the agenda of the August talks: Ukraine's participation in the
Iraqi war theater but also the upcoming Ukrainian elections. Defense
Minister Marchuk announced following these meetings that Kiev would
continue to participate in "the coalition of the willing" and would
maintain its troops in Iraq.

Marchuk was sacked in September, barely a month before the first round
of the presidential elections.

Attempting a Coup d'Etat?

In a televised address on November 25th, Marchuk, sent a message to
the military, police and security forces to disobey the authority of the
civil authorities, namely the government of Leonid Kuchma.

"Ukraines former defense minister and head of the National
Security and Defense Council has declared that hes convinced that
opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko is entitled to be recognized as the
president of Ukraine.

Former Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk called on President Leonid
Kuchma and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych to exercise good sense.
Marchuk underscored that there should be no bloodshed in Ukraine.

Marchuk appealed to state security officers not to fulfill illegal
orders and to remember their official honor and dignity.

He stressed that election fraud in the Nov. 21 presidential
run-off election, which the government says was won by Prime Minister
Yanukovych, was on a mass scale. He said that there is only one way out of
the tense political stand-off that has engulfed Ukraine since Monday:
negotiations between equals.

Marchuk also appealed to Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor
Chernomyrdin to pass along to Russian President Vladimir Putin only
objective information. He reminded officers of the Russian Black Sea fleet
in Sevastopol that they are on the territory of a foreign government, and
that they should remain mindful of that, calling on the Russian
Federations defense minister to obey the law." (See Kiev Post, 26 Nov
2004 and Kanal 5 transcripts, BBC Monitoringm 26 Nov 2004)

This statement by Marchuk, which calls upon the Armed forces and the
Police to go against the government, essentially sets the stage for a
US-NATO sponsored Coup d'Etat.

Power Struggle: Oil and Pipeline Corridors

Behind the presidential elections, there is a power struggle between
pro-US-NATO and pro-Russian factions within the leading political
establishment and the military.

What is at stake is not only the maintenance of the IMF sponsored
macroeconomic agenda, strategic US-NATO military interests in the region
are also at stake.

The objective of the Bush Administration is to install a Ukrainian
government which is firmly aligned with Washington, with the ultimate
objective of displacing the Russian military from the Black Sea.

In this regard, The Ukraine has already signed several military
agreements with NATO and Washington under the government of Leonid Kuchma.

The Ukraine is a member of GUUAM, a military alliance between five
former Soviet republics ( Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and
Moldova). This military alliance was initially designed in 1997 by the
Ukrainian National Security Services (NSBU) in close liaison with
Washington. Its objective was to undermine the alliance between Russia and
Belarus, signed between Moscow and Minsk in 1996.

The Ukraine also signed agreements with Poland and the Baltic states,
pertaining to the control of transport corridors and pipeline routes.

GUUAM lies strategically at the hub of the Caspian oil and gas wealth,
"with Moldava and the Ukraine offering [pipeline] export routes to the
West." The objective of GUUAM was to exclude Russia from the Black Sea,
protect the Anglo-American pipeline routes out of Central Asia and the
Caspian sea and essentially cut Russia off not only from the Caspian sea
oil basin but also from the Black sea.

Coinciding with the ceremony of NATO's 50th anniversary at the outset
of the war on Yugoslavia in 1999, the heads of State from all five GUUAM
countries were present including President Leonid Kuchma of The Ukraine.
They had been invited to NATO's three day celebration in Washington to
sign the GUUAM agreement under NATO and US auspices.

Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, immediately announced that they
would be leaving the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) security
union, which defines the framework of military cooperation between the
former Soviet republics, as well their links to Moscow:

"The formation of GUUAM (under NATO's umbrella and financed by
Western military aid) was intent upon further fracturing the CIS. The Cold
War, although officially over, had not yet reached its climax: the members
of this new pro-NATO political grouping were not only supportive of the
1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, they had also agreed to 'low level military
cooperation with NATO while insisting that 'the group is not a military
alliance directed against any third party, namely Moscow.' Dominated by
Anglo-American oil interests, the formation of GUUAM ultimately purports
on excluding Russia from the oil and gas deposits in the Caspian area as
well as isolating Moscow politically." (Michel Chossudovsky, War and
Globalization, the Truth behind September 11, Global Research, Montreal,
2002, Chapter V)

(Addressing servicemen) When fulfilling any orders given to you, you
must remember one thing: you are dealing with human beings, civilians,
citizens, your brothers, sisters or friends. The main thing is: using
force - to say nothing of using arms - against civilians, against your
fellow citizens is an extremely high risk.

You must remember that any political orders are usually issued
verbally, while commanders issue orders either in writing or verbally.
Therefore you must be very clear about formulating and understanding
orders.

Using force, in any form, is not only a great risk as I said, but is
always fraught with casualties, even when weapons are not used. Servicemen
know well that you can use force without using arms and cause panic and
casualties among protesters because of chaotic movement of a panicking
crowd of people. This is a science you've studied well.

It is worth reminding you that the law on the fundamental principles
of national security says that before deciding to use force a government
must weigh its force compared to the object it plans to using force
against. To put it simply, you cannot use force against the peaceful
population. While using other means, you must ask yourselves whether this
could lead to panic and casualties.

To special forces. I understand that today you are called upon to
perform various tasks as special units within the Ministry of Interior and
the Security Service. When I worked on the law on the Security Services of
Ukraine, I had to add one article, almost in the last minute: officers,
servicemen and officials at the Security Service of Ukraine must not
perform orders that do not correspond to the constitution and the law. The
same is stipulated in other laws that regulate security agencies. In this
connection I want to remind you that most special units must now, first of
all, stay at their home base and, mainly, not to perform any tasks in
plain clothes, especially in protesters' midst. The only thing you can do
is help protesters in keeping order, preventing provocations and
identifying provocateurs who can cause a lot of trouble.

I also want to address special units of the Interior Ministry and
interior troops. It's hard work now. But you must remember one thing. You
are facing people who disagree with the outcome of the election. They are
defending their constitutional right to protest. It is their
constitutional right, and you must help them.

Protesters must not storm

I also want to address protesters themselves. Friends, you need to
understand that there are instances when governments can legitimately use
force: when government bodies come under attack: either the presidential
administration, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Supreme Council, the
Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court.

(Passage omitted: these are guarded by police)

Therefore, there should be no storming. Any storming will invariably
cause casualties.

Russia warned

I also wish to address the leaders of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and
my colleague, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov. Please give an order
to all your units. It is desirable now, while there is a crisis in
Ukraine, that the main units of the Black Sea Fleet stay at their home
base. This would be the wisest and farsighted decision. You have a complex
status. You are based in a foreign state. Therefore, any careless action
could cause great harm to Ukrainian-Russian relations and the fleet's
continued deployment in Ukraine.

I would also like to address the Russian ambassador in Ukraine, Viktor
Chernomyrdin. (In Russian) Viktor Stepanovich, please try and insist that
your staff report unbiased information to the Russian president about the
true state of affairs in Ukraine regarding the election. The Russian
president must receive maximum objective information about developments in
Ukraine. I am sorry, I have certain reasons to give you this advice. But
we have known each other for a long time, and I think you get my meaning.

Message to President Kuchma: vote was rigged

(In Ukrainian) I would also like to address the president of Ukraine.
Leonid Danylovych, you know very well the true state of affairs and the
true reasons for the current situation. I have told you before, it is sad
to see how you are ending your presidency. But unfortunately this is the
way it is. You are president now, and very much depends on you. And
intimidation is not the way out - for either side. The situation has
reached boiling point, a level of confrontation with such potential that
the risk is growing every day. Only talks and nothing else can resolve
this problem. You as president must seize the initiative and understand
that today you as the guardian of the constitution and stability you bear
the chief responsibility for stability and a peaceful way to resolve this
conflict situation.

Leonid Danylovych, all people know there was widespread vote-rigging.
Maybe you don't know this, but teams of Donbass people toured the country
in carousel voting by absentee ballots. And before that there were squads
going around intimidating electoral commissions and voters. They added a
huge number of people to the circle of (opposition leader Viktor)
Yushchenko's supporters and turned many people away from you. Believe me,
it is these circumstances that scared many people, that this is possible
in Ukraine, - these very circumstances caused the greatest damage to your
reputation. Maybe your headquarters do not tell you this, but I have the
moral right - and you know why - to say this straight to your face.

(Passage omitted: more in this vein)

There is only one solution: talks. But not talks between the
victorious and the defeated, but talks between equals. And to reach the
platform of equals, you must seriously consider what happened during the
election. And the fact that there was widespread vote rigging has been
proven.

(Passage omitted: hopes there will be no bloodshed.)

The protest potential is growing fast. But the government is also
concentrating a large potential to counter it. And I know that this
potential is strong. Therefore, you must stop. Just as the arms race which
seemed insurmountable was once stopped, now we must stop the growth of
potential on both sides. The situation is extremely dangerous.

Courts will prove opposition victory

I also wish to address Viktor Yushchenko. Viktor Andriyovych, I am
firmly convinced that legal and constitutional procedures can prove that
you won.

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including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

This is a story from the (corporate) Asia Times about how the US is
engineering the turmoil in Ukraine. It is complex, but bears close
scrutiny in my opinion, as it shows that the US government will work with
the EU when it suits their purpose-- or rather, both the EU and the US can
be made to dance together or apart, depending on the needs of the global
corporations. The same techniques are being used here in USA to turn
activists against each other. Watch Out!

"It is interesting that 2 million anti-war demonstrators who streamed
though the streets of London against the war on Iraq in March 2003 were
politically ignored, but some tens of thousands in central Kiev are
proclaimed to be "the people", while the Ukrainian police, courts and
governmental institutions are dubbed as instruments of oppression. Little
notice was taken when opposition parties in Pakistan, in power in two
provinces, protested against President General Pervez Musharraf, who
reneged on his promise to the opposition to give up the all powerful post
of army chief at the end of 2004. And the many thousands in the streets
were also largely ignored."

BUCHAREST - In scenes reminiscent of the overthrow of Georgian President
Eduard Shevardnadze in November last year (see Georgia in the melting pot,
Dec 3, 2003) and Slobodan Milosevich of Serbia in 2000, crowds opposing
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the official winner of Ukraine's
presidential polls on November 21, massed at the main door to parliament
in support of his rival Viktor Yushchenko, a former premier too, who
claimed that the polls were rigged.

Parliament on Sunday annulled the results, which had given pro-Russian
Yanukovich 49.46% of the votes against 46.61% for pro-West Yushchenko. But
Roman Zvarych, a deputy and one of Yushchenko's close aides, said: "We are
in legal limbo. Much of this we are making up as we go along." The Supreme
Court, as of late seen as a neutral body, was due to sit for a third day
Wednesday to examine allegations of systematic electoral fraud.

These events are part of a major geopolitical battle being fought in
Ukraine, with the United States and Europe trying to encroach on Russia's
traditional strategic turf. With the latter resisting it, the situation is
reminiscent of the Cold War era. Ukraine, despite so far evolving
peacefully, is now teetering on the edge of an abyss, with the possibility
of serious turmoil looming, which could have ramifications that affect
post-Cold War equations.

"If we really want to preserve peace and accord, and if we really want to
build up the democratic society that we talk about so much ... let's
organize new elections," Interfax reported outgoing President Leonid
Kuchma as saying, after a call by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who
expressed concern about reports of a possible split between east and west
Ukraine. After meeting regional leaders and Yanukovich, Kuchma said there
should be legislative reform, including "a constitutional agreement to be
approved by [parliament], because the country needs a legitimate
president".

International mediators will step up efforts on Wednesday to resolve the
crisis. The European Union sent foreign-policy chief Javier Solana to Kiev
this week to meet with Kuchma. A German government statement said Russian
President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder "were in
agreement that the results of a new election, based on Ukraine law and the
will of the Ukraine people, would be strictly respected".

But in spite of the presence of foreign mediators, earlier negotiations
between the warring political leaders did not go well and a financial
crisis now threatens Ukraine; the National Bank of Ukraine issued on
Tuesday a regulation that restricts withdrawals on deposits in Ukrainian
banks. [The IMF connections here, mentioned above: attempting
politically to pressure pro-IMF 'settlement' (win) by financial
extortion.]

Yanukovych comes from the eastern part of the country, which traditionally
has deep economic, historical, cultural, linguistic and ethnic ties with
Russia. Putin personally traveled to Ukraine before each of the election's
two rounds to assure Ukrainian voters that Moscow's sympathies were
unambiguously with Yanukovych. And Putin has already twice congratulated
Yanukovych on winning the election.

Russia's support for Yanukovych in the presidential campaign thus
unavoidably transformed the Ukrainian vote - which was in essence a choice
between the political continuity represented by the prime minister and the
political change embodied by Yushchenko - into a geopolitical choice
between West and East.

While protests in Kiev have hogged international TV coverage, supporters
of Yanukovich in Donetsk's regional council in eastern Ukraine, his
stronghold, voted 164-1 to hold a referendum on December 5 on giving the
region the status of a republic within Ukraine. "We won't tolerate what's
going on in Ukraine," Donetsk regional governor Anatoly Bliznyuk told
lawmakers. We have shown that we are a force to consider." There have been
reports of intimidation of supporters of Yushchenko in the eastern
regions. Most of Ukraine's gross domestic product comes for the eastern
and southern regions of the country.

Meanwhile, Yushchenko, buoyed with full Western support and the
international splashing of Kiev's massive protests in his support across
headlines, raised the stakes on Sunday, saying that he might not accept
the court's decision and called for legal criminal action against
Yanukovich and his supporters. An aide to Yushchenko demanded that
outgoing President Kuchma sack the prime minister and called for the
formation of a coalition government.

In Warsaw, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a pivotal regional
figure and one of the visiting international mediators, said that a
breakup of the state was indeed a real threat. Speaking for the EU, which
had condemned procedural violations of the November 21 vote, Dutch Foreign
Minister Bernard Bot said new elections would be "the ideal outcome". The
likelihood for a fresh poll brightened first when a spokesman for the
Russian Foreign Ministry - despite obvious support for Yanukovich - said
that Moscow also now favored a re-run. Reportedly Yanukovich has said he
would back the new poll only if he and Yushchenko ruled themselves out of
the running. Influential US Senator Richard Lugar, a US monitor, also
weighed in on the international debate. He told Fox News that he favored a
re-run of the election.

Under the Dutch presidency, earlier statements and the reaction of EU
appeared to be harsh. The EU, taken over by political discards at home,
has neither a coherent foreign policy nor the military muscle to fight a
war except under US coercion and tutelage, as in Kosovo. But Ukraine and
the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, gave a welcome pretext to the Western media
to turn its focus away from the destruction and carnage in Iraq.

Western media, such as CNN and BBC, with anchors and often biased experts,
pounced on the story with an enthusiasm unseen since Saddam Hussein's
statue was toppled in Baghdad. London's anti-Iraq war newspaper the
Independent and the pro-war Telegraph excitedly declared a "revolution" in
Ukraine. Across the Atlantic, the rightwing Washington Times welcomed "the
people versus the power" (sic, hardly; Ukraine vs. the CIA closer to the
truth).

It is interesting that 2 million anti-war demonstrators who streamed
though the streets of London against the war on Iraq in March 2003 were
politically ignored, but some tens of thousands in central Kiev are
proclaimed to be "the people", while the Ukrainian police, courts and
governmental institutions are dubbed as instruments of oppression. Little
notice was taken when opposition parties in Pakistan, in power in two
provinces, protested against [Pakistani] President General Pervez
Musharraf, who reneged on his promise to the opposition to give up the all
powerful post of army chief at the end of 2004. And the many thousands in
the streets were also largely ignored.

This writer, who was posted in Bucharest in the early 1980s and has been
based here for many years and was accredited to Azerbaijan in Caucasus in
the mid-1990s, feels that after the collapse of the Soviet Union and
former communist regimes in Europe, mostly money grabbing mafia-style
leadership, supported by the West, have been thrown up as an alternative.
They have built up massive nests in the West on which they then become
dependent, like Russia's billion-dollar oligarchs, who also control "free
media". Under the charade of globalization and economic laissez faire,
hundreds of billions of US dollars have been transferred to Western banks
and institutions, which have become debts for the hapless poor masses in
these countries.

In Romania in 1989 there was a spontaneous uprising by students and people
against the Nicolae Ceausescu regime, but it was taken over by old
Communist Party nomenclature. In 1990, security officials of the old
regime emerged as Romanian nationalists to provoke inter-ethnic riots with
Hungarians in Tirgu Mures. Vladimir Tudor, an admirer of Ceausescu, makes
no bones about his anti-foreigner policy. Under a pro-West president in
the late 1990s, Romania was robbed left and right. EU leaders and the US
have repeatedly criticized rampant and pervasive corruption in Romania,
which itself went to polls on Sunday to elect a new president.

There is a similar pattern developing elsewhere in Eastern Europe with the
nationalist card being used by corrupt politicians to cover up their own
corruption. The events in Serbia, Georgia and now Ukraine are an
expression of people's frustration and helplessness, however, pro-West
leadership is unlikely to deliver the goods either. Romania's GDP now
equals what it was in 1989, when the communist regime was overthrown. Most
of the GDP is now cornered by 10-15% of the top political and bureaucratic
elite. The masses - especially the older generation - suffer from daily
privations and are withering away. The populations in most of the former
communist states are declining fast. But the Western media rarely write
about the terrible impact of this so-called democracy, capitalism and
globalization.

The man "selected" by the West to lead Ukraine, Yushchenko, finds his
support among groups who have privatized public assets to their cronies.
He is supported by huge funds from newly rich Ukrainians, who want to
preserve their gains. Huge amounts of money were also pumped from the West
to groups who support Yushchenko. Openly and blatantly, the US and other
Western embassies paid for exit polls, prompting Russia to do likewise,
though not to the same extent. Western media cited the muzzling of the
media in Ukraine - which included closing the newspaper Silski Visti -
after it ran an anti-Semitic article claiming that Jews had invaded
Ukraine alongside the Wehrmacht in 1941. On September 19, Yushchenko's
ally, Alexander Moroz, told JTA-Global Jewish News: "I have defended
Silski Visti and will continue to do so." Yushchenko, Moroz and their
oligarch ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, meanwhile, cited a court order closing
the paper as evidence of the government's desire to muzzle the media.

A nation divided

At Kiev's School for Policy Analysis, political science expert Olexiy
Haran says historic fault lines are being exploited by government leaders
to divert attention from their tolerance of corruption. "Some of the
governors are trying to push for the split in the country," he said. "I
believe it's being done deliberately. The main issue is corrupted power,
criminals, and democracy, not language or religion." To howls of protests
from the Russian-speaking east, Yuschenko ruled out calls to make Russian
an official language of the country, arguing that this could see
multinational companies and even newspapers print only in Russian. "Until
now, when the West thought about Ukraine, it was negative," said Haran.
"The great thing about these election falsifications is that the people
stood up and the West saw that there is democracy in this grey zone. This
is the Orange Revolution [orange is the color of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine
party]. Everyone here is conscious of the legacy."

The Western media have only highlighted how youthful demonstrators can
bring down an authoritarian regime, simply by attending rock concerts in a
central square. The demonstrations supporting pro-Western Yushchenko have
laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts,
tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing. These are all
[framed as] spontaneous protests. [Actually, in Georgia, they were
practiced for many months, by imported US agitators to support the
US candidate Schakiavili (sp?) [UK Guardian story: "n May and June [2003],
Saakashvili and Zhvania [the Georgian coupmeisters for the US] held
training courses for 1,500 supporters in demonstration techniques, guided
by the Serbs who ousted Milosevic from power in 2000. Overnight
revolutions take a lot of planning."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1101196,00.html ] Enormous
rallies were held in Kiev and eastern Ukraine in support of Yanukovich,
but Western TV channels hardly noticed them. Yanukovich supporters were
denigrated as having been brought in by buses, while ignoring obvious
questions such as where the "Orange Revolution" money has come from and
how quickly the opposition organized. It appears to be another case of
spreading democracy through the use of a civilian coup d'etat.

Ukraine's recent history

The Kiev movement touches on a historical and religious raw nerve in
Ukrainian polity and society. Throughout most of its history, Ukraine was
split between competing empires, and the fault lines run deep with the
great Dnipr River as the divide. The western part of the country was
governed for more than 300 years by either the Polish or Austro-Hungarian
empire while the east was dominated or part of Russia. The east is
Russian-speaking and Christian Orthodox, while the west is mostly
Ukrainian speaking and Greek Catholic, orthodox in character but owing
allegiance to the pope.

With its tortuous and divisive history and lacking in ambivalent
nationalism, Ukraine's current borders were last drawn after World War II,
when some Polish territory was added to it as well some from Romania.
Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev added Russian territory, including
the Black Sea coastline, to Ukraine. Russians in the Soviet republic of
Ukraine had happily voted for independence after the collapse of the USSR
in 1990-91. [Left out that Ukraine declared independece as a republic in
1920--only to be attacked by the USSR and demoted.]

Because of its mixed legacy of history, the international mediators in
Kiev attempting to unravel the election mess include the Polish prime
minister, the EU's Solana, as well as Russian representatives including
Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Apart from Russia's geopolitical interests, a
hostile Ukraine would constrain its access in the West and make Russia's
access to the Black Sea as limited as Iraq's is in the Persian Gulf. If
not handled carefully and sensitively, rapprochement between Moscow and
Brussels to face up to a neo-conservative-driven United States would come
to a standstill. Ukraine itself might break up with unforeseen
consequences for all.

Eventually Western media took some note of what supporters of Yanukovich
were saying: that the specter of Ukraine coming apart could transform the
rich industrial region - along with the Crimean Peninsula - into an
autonomous powerhouse or even lead it to join with Russia. Alexander
Lukyanchenko, mayor of Donyetsk, Yanukovich's home town, told the local
assembly: "We should, in an orderly, constitutional way, stage a
referendum of trust to determine this country's make-up." He warned that
the split could begin unless demonstrators cleared the streets of Kiev,
adding that the rest of Ukraine could not survive without its industrial
east.

Another franchised revolution

The high percentage of votes in Donetsk (96%), the home town of
Yanukovich, provided proof [to the US] that electoral fraud had taken
place, according to Western media. But turnouts of over 80% in areas which
supported [the pro-IMF/US candidate] Yushchenko were not. Yanukovich's
final official score was over 49%, but when Western-supported Georgian
President Mikhail Saakashvili officially polled 96.24% in January, no one
questioned it. The observers who now
denounce the Ukrainian elections applauded Georgia's results, saying that
it "brought the country closer to meeting international standards".

One of the most active "pro-democracy" groups in Ukraine's democratic
opposition is Pora, which means "it's time". The student activists of Pora
received personal tutorials in non-violent resistance from Serbian
students of the Otpor ("resistance") group, which was in the forefront of
toppling Milosevich in Belgrade. Then the Serbs helped the Georgian
vanguard movement Kmara ("enough is enough"). So a Georgian flag was also
being waved in Kiev's Independence Square. In Tbilisi, the
rose-revolutionary Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili interrupted his
first anniversary address to offer a few words of encouragement in
Ukrainian to his "sisters and brothers" in Kiev. The reawakened cold
warriors link the "chain of Europe's velvet revolutions" in this peaceful
march of democracy to what the crowds first chanted on Wenceslas Square in
Prague in November 1989. So a jaded pro-democracy Lech Walesa was there
too in Kiev, just as he had been in Prague.

Pora's posters plastered all over Ukraine depict a jackboot crushing a
beetle, an allegory of what Pora wants to do to its opponents. It was like
this during Nazi-occupied Ukraine, when pre-emptive war was waged against
the Red Plague spreading out from Moscow. Nobody in the West has said
anything against these posters. Pora continues to be presented as an
innocent band of students having fun. But it is an organization created
and financed by Washington, as were sister organizations in Serbia and
Georgia, Otpor and Kmara.

Says a Western Cold War warrior: "If we, comfortably ensconced in the
institutionalized Europe to which these peaceful demonstrators look with
hope and yearning, do not immediately support them with every appropriate
means at our disposal, we will betray the very ideals we claim to
represent." He adds, "At the same time, until now, democracy has been
creeping backwards. Control of the biggest industries, of the media, of
state revenue and of the security services has fallen into the hands of a
corrupt and sometimes murderous elite of cynical, self-loving opportunists
who feed off the enterprise and hard work of others as they float between
the worlds of business, politics and bureaucracy."

This might more appropriately apply to new Western-supported rulers in
former communist countries and even some countries in the West. The United
Kingdom and the US often forget the enormous dysfunction in their own
so-called democratic system, where their governments lied brazenly about
Iraq for over a year in the run-up to war and with impunity, while they
criticize others and support continued brazen Western intervention in the
democratic politics of other countries.

A US franchise ["McRevolution"]

A lot of planning, work and money has gone into efforts to design a US
model for promoting democracy around the world. The model's first success
was notched in Serbia. Funded and organized by the US government, which
deployed US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American
parties and US non-government organizations (NGOs), the campaign defeated
Slobodan Milosevich at the ballot box in Belgrade in 2000.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role in the
campaign to oust Milosevich. In November last year, as US ambassador in
Tbilisi, Miles reapplied the same method successfully. Thanks to his
coaching, US-educated Saakashvili brought down Eduard Shevardnadze. When
the US ambassador in Belarus, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar
operations in Central America, notably in Nicaragua, organized a near
identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus strongman, Alexander
Lukashenko, he failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the
Belarus president declared, referring to the United States' Belgrade
success 10 months earlier.

But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable
to the US in planning the operation in Kiev. It is thus easy to understand
such slickly organized spontaneity. The operation - engineering democracy
through the ballot box and civil disobedience, which would be the envy of
even a Gandhian - is now so smooth that methods have matured into a
template for winning other people's elections. Located in the center of
Belgrade, the Center for Non-violent Resistance, staffed by
computer-literate youngsters, is ready for hire and will carry out
operations to beat even a regime that controls the mass media, the judges,
the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations.

The Belgrade group had on-the-job training in the anti-Milosevich student
movement, Otpor. Catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia
last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was
Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora. Otpor also had a potent, simple slogan that
appeared everywhere in Serbia in 2000 - the two words gotov je, meaning
"he's finished", a reference to Milosevich. A logo of a black-and-white
clenched fist completed the masterful marketing. In Ukraine, the
equivalent is a ticking clock, also signaling that the Kuchma regime's
days are numbered. Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young
activists' weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been
hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful. If
only the Tiananmen Square activists could have had this kind of support in
1989.

Saakashvili had traveled from Tbilisi to Belgrade to be tutored in the art
of mass defiance. In Belarus, the US Embassy organized the dispatch of
young opposition leaders to the Baltic, where they had sessions with the
Serb teachers flown from Belgrade. The Americans had organized the
overthrow of Milosevich from neighboring Hungary as Belgrade was a hostile
territory.

Promotion of democracy (sic) around the world is a bipartisan US effort;
the Democratic Party's National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Republican
Party's International Republican Institute, the US State Department and
USAID (US Agency for International Development) are the main agencies.
They are all involved in these campaigns and are further helped by the
Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute. US
pollsters and professional consultants are hired to organize focus groups
and use psephological data to plot strategies.

In Serbia, when US pollsters Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates found
that the assassinated pro-Western opposition leader, Zoran Djindjic, was
hated at home and had little chance of beating Milosevich in an election,
an anti-Western Vojislav Kostunica was promoted. Djindjic came up later
and handed over Milosevich to the Hague Tribunal. Of course, the US is
determinedly opposed to the International Criminal Court and would deny
aid to those countries who do not sign a bilateral accord providing
immunity to the US.

It is claimed that officially the US government spent US$41 million to
fund the year-long operation to get rid of Milosevich from October 1999.
In Ukraine, the figure is said to be about $14 million so far.

While there are reputed outside election monitors from groups such as the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Ukrainian
elections and elsewhere involved thousands of local election monitors
trained and paid by Western groups. Reportedly, Freedom House and the NDI
helped fund and organize the "largest civil regional election monitoring
effort" in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also
organized exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Yushchenko an
11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed.

The exit polls are important because they help seize the initiative in the
propaganda war with the regime, invariably appearing first, receiving wide
media coverage and putting the onus on the attacked regime to respond. And
how to react when the incumbent regime tries to steal a lost election. The
advice was to stay calm and cool but organize mass displays of civil
disobedience, which must remain peaceful but could invite violent
suppression.

The US has now adapted and perfected the latest communication techniques
to apply to post-Soviet states to bring about desirable changes.
"Instruments of democracy" are used to topple unpopular dictators or
unfriendly regimes, once a successor candidate friendly to the West has
been groomed. The Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored Third World
uprisings of the Cold War days to remove prime minister Mohammed Mossadaq
of Iran, who had nationalized its oil resources, and of Salvador Allende
of Chile, which brought US favorite General Augusto Pinochet to power, a
man whose crimes are still being catalogued and looked into, are now
passe.

That is the promotion of democracy, US style. Who is next in line?

K Gajendra Singh served as Indian ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from
1992-96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the
1990-91 Gulf War), Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the
Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies and editorial adviser with global
geopolitics website Eurasia Research Center, USA. E-mail
Gajendrak@hotmail.com.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

add a comment on this article
thanks 01.Dec.2004 20:32
. link

Thanks for the post. I've been looking for something like this. It's just
what I feared: another "structural adjustment" by internally sponsored
groups from external U.S. security services, replete with lots of threats
and extortions. Same as in Aserbaijan earlier. Same as in Georgia (south
of Russia, not the U.S. state). Very Orwellian. External manipulation is
being "branded" as democracy!

I love the Asia Times. (They are additionally the only paper to have
someone repeatedly writing about the Bilderbergers.)

Since the non-violent revolution in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, two
weeks ago, hand grenades have been detonated outside opposition party
offices; a bomb blew in the windows of state TV while the Russian
ambassador was on air; the United Georgian bank was robbed and a kidnap
attempt made on the chairman; a former National Democratic party leader
received a volley of bullets through her window; and a Russian embassy
official was attacked in his home. Having ignored Georgia during its
12-year struggle to create democracy, much of the media gave the ousting
of president Eduard Shevardnadze by the young hero Mikhail Saakashvili the
fairytale treatment, then dropped it from the news.

The demonstrations in Tbilisi built up over three weeks. People gathered
in protest against the [accusation of] rigged elections. [Like
in Ukraine, the pro-US candidate, in this case,] Saakashvili urged
crowds on to the streets each night. Friends told me they were alarmed at
his rhetoric, too redolent of Zviad Gamsakhurdia - the first president,
elected in 1991 - whose term ended in 1992 when he was ousted in a civil
war. Yet even my most rational friends had become implicit supporters of
Saakashvili by the final weekend of Shevardnadze's rule.

It was the country's St George's day when Saakashvili splintered open the
doors of parliament and yelled at the old dragon, Shevardnadze. This was a
brilliant piece of timing. Using the Georgians' love of their mythic
culture, Saakashvili became a hero, seducing not only the people but the
international community into believing that this was a people's uprising.
My friends were euphoric. Even now, they seem to have accepted a one-party
state as the best outcome.

No one seems to be asking the hard questions. Shevardnadze was due to
leave office in the elections of 2005, having served three terms as
president. Who decided power had to change hands now?

There were US flags in the crowds during the revolution as well as
Georgian ones. Saakashvili is a US-trained lawyer. His only experience in
government was, briefly, as minister of justice under Shevardnadze. At 35
he is just old enough to qualify as a presidential candidate. Together
with Zurab Zhvania, leader of the Democrats, he has been back to
Washington on several visits in the past two years.

In May and June, Saakashvili and Zhvania held training courses for 1,500
supporters in demonstration techniques, guided by the Serbs who ousted
Milosevic from power in 2000. Overnight revolutions take a lot of
planning.

Shevardnadze began in office 11 years ago by selling national resources,
[exactly the same privatization policy as in US-candidate in Ukraine,
mentioned above] such as the main electricity company, to the US and
welcoming American investment. Like anyone who has lived in Georgia, I am
used to the constant power cuts. In November, when the lights failed more
than usual, a friend remarked wearily that the electricity company had
been resold to Russians. Perhaps Shevardnadze, nearing retirement, was
hedging his bets.

Georgia has two key attributes as far as America and Russia are concerned.
One is an oil pipeline connecting the Caspian supply to the Black Sea; the
other is a nucleus of Chechen rebels in the mountains. Georgia is a mouse
kicked about by two elephants.

Yesterday Donald Rumsfeld flew into Tbilisi to talk to the new triumvirate
of Saakashvili, Zhvania and the acting president, Nino Burdzhanadze. He
will visit the US military base at Krtsanisi, where Georgians are trained
in anti-terrorist[TM] methods. Georgia borders the Middle East and Turkey
as well as Russia.

Georgians deserve praise for staging peaceful demonstrations that involved
up to 50,000 people. But were they just extras in a well-planned drama
starring Saakashvili from American casting?

Saakashvili, Zhvania and Burdzhanadze have promised fair elections, but
they came to power by forcing the president from office and jumping the
election process. Where does that leave the people who voted for parties
other than Saakashvili's National Movement and the Democrats? Leading the
opposition poll was the substantial - but highly suspect - vote for Aslan
Abashidze, warlord of the southern region of Adzharia. A lawful
re-election would have reduced his power by democratic vote. He is now
looking to Moscow for support.

It is a tragedy for Georgians, who queued for hours to vote on election
day and desperately want a democracy. In the new presidential elections
scheduled for January 4, Saakashvili is the only serious candidate. The
Labour party leader has announced that it is pointless to stand. This was
not a people's revolution. It was a coup, masked by the biggest street
party that Tbilisi has ever seen.

Charlotte Keatley has been commissioned by the RSC to write a play about
democratic change in Georgia

US Government Exports Election Fraud To Belgium
By Thomas Deflo, Online Journal, 12-1-2004

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On May 18, 2003, the Belgian, Flemish Green Party by the name of Agalev (now Groen!) got crushed in the Belgian elections. ... It is only now that I dare to write down my testimony, because I was harassed and intimidated for over a year.

In Belgium, the whole voting chain, by royal law, is controlled by the Ministry of Interior. Under the veil of 'security,' the counting of the votes is totally opaque to external, parliamentary oversight. I witnessed this personally as an official delegate for the Green Party during election day in the municipality of Schaerbeek. Party delegates were not allowed to witness the tally: it was strictly forbidden to enter the rooms where the counting process occurred. Party members simply had to wait for a sheet of paper with the supposed results to be handed over to them. Present administrators, not the least the sitting election judge, were as far from neutral as possible, chanting victory as they 'read' the results for their preferred party. I was dumbfounded to see how what were clearly party stooges were in charge of counting the votes. Fortunately, there is one last hope for a party witness to have some impact on the voting system: he can write down his remarks in an official document, which can then be used by the party, if wanted, to file a protest and demand a recount. This official document is the so-called 'Proces Verbal'. At the end of the day, however - and here, the suspicion was obvious - the sitting judge refused to prepare the document. This was in clear violation with the proper election procedure.

All polls had indicated a share of around 8% of votes for the Green Party. In Belgium, a party is not allowed to stay in Parliament if it drops under 5%. A week later elections were held and miraculously Agalev got exactly 4.9%. The Green Party had to leave the Parliament and the government.

-----------------------------------

On May 18, 2003, the Belgian, Flemish Green Party by the name of Agalev (now Groen!) got crushed in the Belgian elections. The ecological party supposedly lost two thirds of its electorate and all its seats in the federal Parliament. In reality, the election was a fraud, performed on foreign soil by the CIA with the help of the complicit Belgian State Security. A very successful coup.

It is only now that I dare to write down my testimony, because I was harassed and intimidated for over a year.

The reason for the coup's success lay in its long preparation. During the preceding years, Green Party members were criticized and ridiculed in the majority of media outlets, some falsely accused of judicial wrongdoings. This propaganda was orchestrated, as the CIA has done in so many other coups around the world. The source of this propaganda evidently came from the Belgian CIA-linked State Security, under the direction of Koen Dassen, and was produced by the US embassy.

This relentless attempt to skew the public mind set, also known as psy-ops, slowly started paying off. The rather gullible Belgian people absorbed the negative portraying of the ecological party, with no clue as to the propaganda's real origin nor to its eventual purpose: to make a total defeat at the election credible. Many media corporations lost all sense of objectivity and cooperated in order to effectively destroy the Green Party's public image.

The election fraud was next prepared by a fraudulent poll in an allied newspaper, exactly one week before voting day. All polls had indicated a share of around 8% of votes for the Green Party. The fraudulent poll indicated less than 5%. In Belgium, a party is not allowed to stay in Parliament if it drops under 5%. A week later elections were held and miraculously Agalev got exactly 4.9%. The Green Party had to leave the Parliament and the government. This signified the end of a progressive, left-wing party in Flemish politics.

Fundamental to a soft coup d'etat, of course, is the vote fraud itself.

Just like in the U.S., Belgians vote mainly by way of touch screen machines.

The system is transparently prone to fraud. The voters receive magnetic cards which are inserted in the voting machine slot. The cards then register the votes, and must be retracted from the machine to be brought back to the local booth computer, swallowing all cards and supposedly adding up their results on a floppy disk. Upon closure of the voting bureau, all floppy disks from all voting stations are then centralized in the local city hall and processed behind closed curtains.

In Belgium, the whole voting chain, by royal law, is controlled by the Ministry of Interior. Under the veil of 'security,' the counting of the votes is totally opaque to external, parliamentary oversight. I witnessed this personally as an official delegate for the Green Party during election day in the municipality of Schaerbeek. Party delegates were not allowed to witness the tally: it was strictly forbidden to enter the rooms where the counting process occurred. Party members simply had to wait for a sheet of paper with the supposed results to be handed over to them. Present administrators, not the least the sitting election judge, were as far from neutral as possible, chanting victory as they 'read' the results for their preferred party. I was dumbfounded to see how what were clearly party stooges were in charge of counting the votes.

Fortunately, there is one last hope for a party witness to have some impact on the voting system: he can write down his remarks in an official document, which can then be used by the party, if wanted, to file a protest and demand a recount. This official document is the so-called 'Proces Verbal'. At the end of the day, however - and here, the suspicion was obvious - the sitting judge refused to prepare the document. This was in clear violation with the proper election procedure.

How the agents of satanic NATO (which just banned any christian references from its EU constitution) managed to mobilize the last people that didn't experience yet their reign of terror, in the Ukraine : using christian symbols